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Re:Open source is illegal? by userulluipeste on Wednesday August 31, 2011 @05:48AM (#2944938)
I'm a romanian and I knew nothing about it. It seems to be illegal only for governmental use because of the lack of accountability. If you think about it, it make sense. "WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE" doesn't sound promising or fit for governmental critical systems.
Re:Open source is illegal? by andrewf on Wednesday August 31, 2011 @06:24AM (#2945006)
Similar language appears in the Windows EULA:

Where allowed by your local laws, Microsoft excludes implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. [1]

And OS X's:

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE APPLE SOFTWARE AND SERVICES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, [...] INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES AND/OR CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE [2]

[1] http://download.microsoft.com/Documents/UseTerms/Windows%207...

[2] http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx107.pdf

Re:Open source is illegal? by bad_user on Wednesday August 31, 2011 @05:53AM (#2944945)
I'm also romanian -- it's simple really, the romanian government in general are leaches that are interested in just sucking EU finances (and doing a bad job at it too). Whatever software they need will probably be done by Siveco / UTI; nepotism being quite at home.

They are also mostly incompetent.

Re:Open source is illegal? by clyfe on Wednesday August 31, 2011 @06:46AM (#2945037)

    On page 64 of the 'Specifications', in a paragraph
    highlighted in yellow, the ministry writes: 
    "All versions of software that are part of the offer 
    may not be published under a 'free software license' 
    - GPL or similar."
When you licence your solution to the government, you do so under a commercial licence. The 'Specifications' were asking you not to have any parts of your software under a free license (to/from third parties).

Of course this move is to limit competitiveness since EU explicitly favors open software: http://www.osor.eu/eupl/introduction-to-the-eupl-project

This limits the little guys that try to cut costs by using open software as building blocks for the solution, so only the giants vendoring expensive "enterprise" solutions can participate. And rest assured, open solutions are many times of better quality.

Re:Open source is illegal? by ubernostrum on Wednesday August 31, 2011 @07:35AM (#2945113)
"Free software license" is a tricky term. Doesn't Windows still have BSD copyright notices embedded in it?